Cheri Dotterer: cerebellum controls a lot of things and
some of the new research is it's directly related to learning and
memory.
Jonily : Hello, everyone. Welcome to tier one intervention
podcast, talking about strengthening the tier one for
classroom with academic and non academic interventions,
strategies and techniques to meet the needs of all students
regardless of ability or disability. I am Jonily
Zupancic, and I am here with my partner in education partner in
crime. CHERI Dotterer. I teach lessons. When I give quizzes,
when I come back to content, why do students have so much trouble
retrieving the information and recalling the information after
I've taught it? So Sherry is going to enlighten us today on
everything that's happening? That affects memory and
retention of content.
Cheri Dotterer: Good morning, everybody. It's cheri Dotterer,
your classroom coach and lesson plan whisperer, what's happening
inside your brain? What is sensation,
Jonily : I've heard you talk about this a lot. But I'm gonna
say the first thing that came to my mind was feelings. And I know
you talk about this difference between feelings and emotion.
But there's some times I think of this word stimulus, when I
think sensation, and how that makes me feel emotionally,
mentally, physically.
Cheri Dotterer: Yes, we are a three part being we have a mind
we have a body and we have a spirit. And sensation is a
stimulus sensation is that touch. It's that what's going
into the fovea of the eye. It's that sound that you hear. It's
that taste, or that smell. All of those things, that initial
contact, is that initial sensation. And that initial
sensation can be calming or alarming. When it's alarming.
You're never going to get anything beyond what what I call
the amygdala hijack. Actually, I don't call that somebody else
coined that phrase. That phrase was coined by Daniel, Dr. Daniel
Amon, he is a radiologist, and psychiatrist, what a
combination. But he does some amazing things with radiology
and how and he's done some research into what happens in
the brain with different diagnoses. And he's done some
extensive research, and how the brain lights up with normal
people, and atypical people. And matter of fact, he has done
80,000 quarterbacks. And he has researched post concussion, how
every concussion changes their brain. So he has a big series on
what happens after concussion. So he's very intriguing to me.
He wrote a book called Healing ADHD, and that is absolutely one
of my favorite books, to really delve into ADHD, change your
brain change your life was another one of his books. And it
really talks about your health and he and his wife have an
actual health system her her name's Tana, make sure that we
share some of that stuff in the show notes so that you can reach
out to him if that interests you. We mentioned the five
sensations we mentioned, smell, taste, hearing, vision and
touch. And so those are the little icons, I have to
represent those different sensations. The thing of it is
we have three more. Inside. You also have the ability to have
sensation. These words are proprioception, vestibular, and
interoception. Today, I'm going to delve a little bit into the
proprioception, and other podcast episodes, you'll get to
hear me talk a little bit more about vestibular and
interoception. So what I use the spring for is the proprioception
because proprioception is reminds me Have a spring, it's
the spring, that's helping the joint know how far to bounce
back and forth. I use the Tumbleweed for vestibular
because that's the one that makes you go tumble and move.
And then the last one really does reflect those feelings that
you mentioned earlier Jonily, and where it's where the, our
inner, that inner soul connects with our body. And so it emotion
and feelings, and all of the internal organs are responding
to interoception. And let's really dig into the impact of
the olfactory system on you in the classroom, the olfactory
system, your nose, think about the anatomy around your head,
right now, where does that sense go, it goes straight right into
the middle of the brain, into the Olympic system. So your
brain is basically separated into three parts, it has the
brainstem, and that's the back of the neck, which goes up to
the center of the brain, which is the limbic system. And then
we have the outer layer, which is the cortex, that's where all
the thinking occurs, and all the comparisons to our world. So
that DRAM is really that rudimentary level, it is
controlling things like how fast you breathe, what's going on
with your heart rate, turns on and off digestion, when we go up
to the Olympic system takes those sensations that we feel
from looking at our eyes, our mouth, and all those other
areas, and filters them. The thing that's different with
sensation of smell, is it goes directly into the Olympic
system, it bypasses the brainstem. And it doesn't go
into the cortex directly. It only goes to that association
cortex in the frontal lobe, which I'm getting a little
technical on you. But I want to say this, because the olfactory
system is the one that you're going to get a non thinking
response out of, okay, I'm gonna get a little crass, maybe here.
So you have one of those kids in your classroom that passes one
of those very loud gas bubbles, the one that all the other kids
are going, although that initial response of Ooh, that really did
stink, that is all subconscious, which is where the Olympic
system is, that's your subconscious brain. And all
those responses that you cannot control are going right into
that limbic system. So that is the only sensation that goes
directly into the Olympic system that you have no other filtering
control, it is raw, think about the classroom. Do you defuse
essential oils? Or do you defuse something that you can get off
the shelf at the grocery store like a glade? It may not be good
for all kids was the eighth grade math classroom? How about
that John Lee it was the math classroom. Anyway, the maths
teacher had glade push, push ups in her plugs all over the room.
I think I found three of them. But when I opened her door for
the first time that morning, I got blasted with an overwhelming
smell that I could not tolerate. I started tearing, I started
sneezing. And I'm going oh, this is not going to work today. And
then I realized what she had done. So I just gently pulled
out way through the room pulled out all of them and left them
sit on the floor or at some place next to where the outlet
was. And I left a message for her. When I let at the end of
the day saying hey, I pulled them out. This is why I'm
allergic to them. So I want you to think about those smells that
are going on in your classroom that you may be on suffering as
a calm for some may not be a calm for others. What are your
thoughts on that? Did you ever have any experiences where what
you thought was calming, was not becoming?
Jonily : No, for me smell definitely affects my thinking.
Just a side note here, I grew up in households with cigarette
smoking. And I remember the smell, just when I would leave
the house the smell on my clothes, it was something that
was overwhelming. And then when I moved out to go into a place
now where that smell is, and just it brings back that
sensation that I had felt previous. And I never thought
about that before sharing when you were talking, but that was
one smell that I think really affected my mind to be honest.
And
Cheri Dotterer: it will it's going to block. That filtering
system from working effectively sensation that I'm going to talk
a little bit about here is taste. We have a couple
different things that happen with taste, we have the taste
buds on our tongue, that are going to share the different
flavors, the bitter, the sweet, the salty, but we also have
saliva that's getting put in our mouth, we have that ability to
chew straight up and down. Or if we have the more advanced to
where we're chewing with our jaw at the bottom, going around in a
circle, that stimulation from chewing can enhance attention.
Sometimes all you need is a cold drink to stimulate attention. So
thinking about those kids that are not paying attention in
class, that ability to have water with a straw that's going
to allow them to suck the water up into their mouth, rather than
a sports bottle without the funny lid but just like a
regular drink, this couldn't give a different effect on their
attention. With when you have to pucker your lips, you're going
to get a stimulus that's getting shot through the brain. And it's
going to increase attention.
Jonily : I've always heard and been told that. And I know for
me now that I'm reflecting on this chewing gum, oftentimes
will help me get into a really focused state when I'm doing my
work. And then oftentimes I will I know this is going to sound
weird, but chew ice, which helps me think and is there anything
to a taste of a minty flavor that stimulates that brain? So
talk to us about that Sherry, because I know a lot of times in
schools when we are doing testing, we might give the kids
mints. I know gum is a hot topic, we really don't want kids
to have gum, but for me and my work. And when I'm working on
projects, or presentations or lesson planning, I know that
chewing really helps me maintain a good focus or is that just in
my head?
Cheri Dotterer: No, it's no it's not meant has a dual effect.
Mint goes down into your GI tract. And it helps calm
digestion. All of our neurotransmitters are made in
our gut. And they are sent to our brain. So if you're calming
all of those anxiety related feelings that happened in your
gut, you're going to have a better connection to the
neurotransmitters that need to go back up to your brain. The
taste goes a little bit through the brainstem. It goes up into
the Olympic system as a filter. But there's also this thing in
the back of the head called the cerebellum. That's where we
control and we smooth out movement. If you didn't have
that cerebellum, when you go to pick up a glass of water, your
will be shaking all over the place. And when we have students
or adults or whatever the have that jerky movement, that's one
of the places that a neurologist will look for a mishap that
might be happening in the brain. And the cerebellum controls a
lot of things and some of the new research is it's directly
related to learning and memory. It's directly related to
learning and memory with cerebellum isn't working, the
cerebellum is going to mess up the connections beyond that
point with access to learning. So the that system is very
important. So, ice chewing. Mints are all good to help
stimulate thinking and attention in your students. So be careful
of temperature because sometimes temperature isn't always needing
to be cold. To stimulate attention, sometimes you just
need the actual water. So don't worry so much about the
temperature. However, they do know that cold will stimulate
more. So if you have a kid who's overstimulated, you might want
to give them some warm water, your tongue is moving, your jaw
is moving. So it has to go to the motor cortex, and the
association cortex to make associations what to say,
there's also a part of the temporal lobe, which is on the
side of the brain next to the ears. And there's two areas in
there one's called the Broca's area one calls the warning keys
area, one of those areas helps with receptive speech, the other
one helps with expressive speech. So there is a spot where
it's going to actually form the words and make associations to
the language. It's a little complex, wouldn't you say?
Jonily : It's very common. Honestly, Sherry, the amount of
information that our kids actually do retain, should be
celebrated, because there's so much that's going on for
learning to happen. And I just trinette has a great point to
your point, Sherry, I'm just going to reiterate it because I
think this is an important statement to make, which is the
straw in using a straw to drink. The sucking trinette says the
second is a calming mechanism, which shear you've already
mentioned that, but I think it's important enough to say that,
again, just little things that we can think about. Especially I
know, we're talking about tier one and the full classroom, but
especially for pulling students one on one or in small group and
working through maybe an intervention cycle in a smaller
group rather, rather than the whole class. I think these are
really some key interventions that we can use with kids to
help their sensation, and in the end will improve memory will
improve their emotional attachment to the situation, it
will improve their focus, and then long term, it's going to
improve the retention of the content that we're trying to get
them to master.
Cheri Dotterer: Right now you are getting the beginning part
of a two and a half hour workshop, we are offering you as
a podcast listener, a discount for your first month. So for a
mere $17, you can join us engage in one of the workshops. If it's
not for you, fine, we understand that. But if you're finding that
this material is engaging and enriching your lesson planning,
if you are an OT, and it's enriching your practice, in
connection with your students, join us for a couple of months
and at every month after your initial month will be $97. Or
you can join annually. But I wanted to take this break right
here and do that. Because I really think it's important that
you understand that John Lee is going to start going into a much
deeper impact, and much deeper into making rectangles and how
it relates academically, but there's always those underlying
connections to what's happening non academically. And that's
where I will interject thoughts and comments. Our next one is
auditory. While we hear that vision, hearing and kinesthesia
are the three types of learning. Why is hearing so important?
What that is actually one of the first sensations that we really
encounter when we're born. The first thing that happens is we
yell and can we hear ourselves yell? Can we hear our mother
respond to that yell? And we make those nonverbal
communications with the crying but some kids really have
trouble. There is a lot of research and this is why a lot
of kids have tubes in their ears. is there's a lot of
connections between central auditory processing disorder,
and difficulty with hearing. I know my hearing isn't a result
of ear infections and stuff and reason I never had tubes put in
my ears. However, my hearing is a result of being in marching
band in the percussion section and being the cymbal player and
having that sound constantly in front of me and that that
vibration that hits you in the air can affect your eardrum and
also your hearing. So the intensity of sound will also
impact my uncle and my father. Were both in submarines. My
uncle was in the engine room. His hearing, he's just about
deaf at this point in his life, my dad has better hearing
because he was at a different part on the submarine. But they
both have central hearing loss because of the intensity of the
sound around them. That's why decibel levels are so crucial to
kids learning. I had a student who Gosh, Mom, mom, this was a
private student that I had, Mom was asking me to help her out.
And they actually had the audiologist come in, and then
entire day, and record the decibel levels throughout the
day, because there was a point in time in the day where she
would just shut down and go ballistic. And what they were
trying to figure out if it was decibel level, or there was
something else going on. So they had one person doing a
functional behavioral assessment. And then she was
doing the the decibel levels. And when the kids had free time,
that point in time where the kids are all making all the
noise, it was too much for her to handle. So the teacher had to
strategically ask her to go to a certain area of the room that
was created like a little cocoon, that will make it a
little bit soft for her. So when we had this free time that she
could then bring herself back into the group, but that sudden
change was too much for her to handle. So gusta gustatory
auditory is really a factor A lot of kids with that central
processing, auditory processing disorder, they cannot hear can't
vowel sounds, they can't hear on a oh, they can't hear a E I owe
you, they're a little it's a little easier. But think about
it, if talking about the square root of something, or you're
talking about parentheses, first of all, they got to know what
that symbol means they have to have that connection to the to
what that looks like. But if they're having trouble
understanding what the word is that you're even saying, they
got shut down. They're back here trying to process they lost five
sentences of what you just said. Next one is vision. And this is
probably the one that I know the most about. In my book, I talk
about the vision and stuff a lot. And vision is very
complicated. We have the stuff coming in through the eye. It
goes back through the retina. The nervous system, switches
sides for half of the vision. And then it stays on the same
side for half. It goes back into this back part of the brain
called the occipital lobe. It also has some touch in the
cerebellum and is creates a digital file. You know how we
have 10s frames and 12 frames and eight frames. The occipital
lobe actually makes it look like a binary code. We get
12121212123 subtle change in color. I have the green on
today. But how many shades of green do I have on each one of
those greens is different file of binary code in the occipital
lobe. That is sent to the parietal lobe which is the green
part. So the occipital lobe was the pink part. The prior lobe is
where we interpret and I have the same thing in this hand.
It's imaginary right now I know that it's round. It has a stem.
It has a leaf. Sometimes it's green, sometimes it's red. Oh it
has this thing on the bottom. It flushing on the inside. What is
it? it, we have the other side of the the opposite parietal
lobe, which is saying, oh, that's an apple, it begins with
a, it has two pieces of nail in the knee. So we have this logic
thing going on, we have this creative thing going on, those
two sides of the parietal lobes have to connect together, that
information goes to the association cortex in the
frontal lobe, I've been keep talking about it, that's that
blue part. Remember, we have 3 trillion, 3 trillion nerves in
our, in our brain, when you have a sensation, when you have
something that like you're seeing, or touching, or
whatever, you can instantaneously tell that it
happened. The last of the sensors that we talked about all
the time is Touch. Touch is even more complex than vision. With
touch, we have, like touched heavy touch, we have pain, we
have temperature, like hot and cold, all of those different
areas has nerve. So when somebody is touching your hand,
when you touch your own hand, is it hot? Is it cold? Is it good,
bad touch? Is it too forceful? Is it just right?
All of that all of those messages go up through the
brainstem and back through that limbic system through the
cerebellum. In, they do go into the parietal lobe a little bit,
because they're trying to make those associations to what
you're seeing. And up in the motor cortex and the association
cortex. And I'm stopping at that point. Because once that hits
the association cortex, and that's that last stop where
everything gets assimilated together. So we have something
happen, we have a smell that goes with it, there might be a
taste that goes with it. Think about ice cream, you've got a
smell, you've got a taste, you might be touching the cone, you
might be touching the ice cream itself, you are using a spoon to
put that in your mouth, you have the metal, you have all of those
sensations. And when it goes to that association cortex, it
goes, Oh, I'm just eating ice cream, that's okay. Or, oh, no,
she's putting up a fraction. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing
here. And it sees and it makes those reactions to that. And it
sends messages through that, which is going to shut down or
stimulate your thinking all this stuff is happening. Before
education can happen. And it's that your sensation system and
your motor system, start growing the moment you're conceived. Any
thoughts so far on the five senses,
Jonily : from what I've heard and connect making those
connections to my work as classroom teacher math
specialist, the two sensations that I have really deliberately
and intentionally trained myself, to support students to
give them the positive sensations that they need for
learning to occur are the vision and the hearing. And I'm going
to talk about those today in our extended session. But just to
recap, the smell is going to affect or even negate any poor
instructional practices that I'm using. So just keeping in mind
and being aware of the smell, and the feel, and some of those
other senses, subconsciously, are going to affect access to
learning and vision and hearing. I think one of the techniques
and techniques that are going to improve memory and retention of
content is with hearing, I will use the strategy. All right,
kiddos, I'm going to tell you something, I don't want you to
think about it. But then I'm going to tell you again in a
different way. And then I'm gonna tell you again yet in a
different way, preparing kids for what they're about to hear.
And I will very intentionally tell them the same thing three
different times with pauses in between and allowing them to
process what I'm saying and As I say it verbally in different
ways, it will give different students access to the learning.
In addition to telling them what I'm going to tell them, and then
telling them very deliberately and intentionally in multiple
ways, I want to parallel that with a visual. And that is the
big topic for today. Sherry, we had talked about a picture is
worth 1000 words, my work in mathematics, and studying why
the number there are, I would say about 60 to 70% of our kids,
that struggle innately with mathematics is oftentimes
because the words the language will get in the way that
hearing. But oftentimes, the symbols and the notations and
the number are so abstract, that if I can associate a picture, a
context or an experience with that notation, I'm going to
enhance the understanding of this mathematical language that
we have. Not only is the brain and the body, very complex, but
the mathematics is a very complex subject to understand
back to that phrase, a picture's worth 1000 words, anyone have
thoughts on what that phrase what that quote means? And what
that has to do with learning and memory and retention of content.
One
Unknown: thing I feel like is when you associate hearing and
vision together with your picture's worth 1000 words, for
any friends that have any visual deficits, if you can pair that,
with the auditory with the tactile with the smells, all
that kind of stuff, you then can help fill in those gaps of when
they do have those visual deficits, that they're not able
to put that connection together, you're helping build that
connection.
Jonily : Great point and the pure definition of multisensory
once. That wraps up our time today. And I just have a couple
of final thoughts. We started today with this question, why
don't kids remember. And Sherry walked us through the complexity
of the brain, the body and the spirit, and how all of those
things interact together to produce access to learning. I'm
hoping that through, you've seen ways that we can connect the
medical brain based cognitive science, occupational therapy
world to what is natural in learning and have a place in our
math classrooms. So that numbers come alive. So thanks, everybody
for being here. This was session three, tier one interventions.